Who is PostFreely being created for?
It is not possible to create an application for everyone. Trying to build an application for everyone effectively means you build it for no one.
So there needs to be specific types of people we are building PostFreely for.
In the replies to this post we will list, discuss, and describe the archetypes related to, relevant to, or important to PostFreely.
⚠️ This discussion should try to use “neutral” language in its descriptions. ⚠️
Examples
For example —
One type of person we may be building PostFreely for is — People who use WriteFreely, who like WriteFreely, but wish it had some additional features (such as uploading images, or a way to see replies, etc).
Another type of person we may be building PostFreely for is — People who like writing in markdown.
Yet another type of person we may be building PostFreely for is — People who want to make their content simultaneously available on the Fediverse and the “smallnet” alt-protocols such as finger, gemini, gopher, HTTP (restricted), mercury, nex, and others.
Etc.
There are many other types of people relevant to PostFreely. The purpose of this discussion is to list out, describe, and discuss these. We will do that in the replies to this post, rather than trying to list them all out here.
Archetype
The name we give to these types of people is archetype.
So —
What are the architypes we are creating PostFreely for?
What are their problems? What do they want?
PostFreely may try to solve some of their problems. PostFreely may try to address some of their wants.
What is an Archetype
archetypes (noun): an idealized model of a number of similar things.
From the point-of-view of industrial-research — an archetype is a model of some aspect of a person shared among many people.
(UX people tend to call “archetypes”: “personas”. And marketers tend to call “archetypes”: “segments”. In practice, all 3 of these are very similar concepts.)
Some examples of (non-Fediverse and non-PostFreely specific) archetypes include:
- father,
- mother,
- son,
- daughter
- brother,
- sister,
- husband,
- wife,
- gardener,
- farmer,
- computer programmer,
- grocery store cashier,
- CEO
- CTO
- etc.
You can also probably already see that an individual could express more than one archetype. For example — a single individual could be — a father, a husband, a brother, a son, a CTO, and a programmer at the same time during a certain span of their life.
The archetypes an individual expresses could also change over their life-time too. For example — before someone has a child, they wouldn’t be a father or a mother yet; but after they have a child, they would (also) become a father, or a mother (in addition to whatever other archetypes they express).
In this discussion we will focus on archetypes relevant or important to PostFreely.
PostFreely Features
Features in PostFreely would usually be tied to a problem or want of an archetype.
And are not just made up arbitrarily.
So understanding the relevant, related, and important archetypes for PostFreely is an important precursor before a roadmap can be created.
Archetype Discovery
Archetypes are discovered. They are not arbitrarily made-up.
Usually archetypes are discovered by analyzing quantitative-data. And often the quantitative-data is data you collect yourself.
Maybe by interviewing people. Maybe by reading discussions on the Fediverse, on forums, and other places. Etc.
(CHARLES NOTE: I have already done research in this area. But like with most research — it is never done, and the research work should be ongoing,)
Let’s discuss.
Who is PostFreely being created for?
What are the architypes we are creating PostFreely for?
What are their problems? What do they want?
Please reply with your thoughts.
⸺ Charles Iliya Krempeaux ( @reiver@mastodon.social )
cc: @mathew@universeodon.com @whylamb@aus.social @SrRochardBunson@universeodon.com
#PostFreely
One archetype I’ve noticed is what I’ve called —
WriteFreely Plus
Which I’ll shorten to:
WF Plus or WF+
The way I would describe these people are —
They either use WriteFreely, or have considered it. They like WriteFreely. But wish WriteFreely had more features.
Although what those extra features are might be different between these people.
Some examples seem to be:
- uploading images,
- password-reset,
- replies showing up on their site,
- being able see notifications (ex: favorites, boosts, replies, etc) to their posts,
- being able to have discussions with people who reply to their posts,
- being able to see who is following you,
- edits being propagated on the Fediverse,
- easier ways of skinning and customization,
- imports from various other software,
- support for team blogs,
- gemini support,
- etc.
I think more research is needed to understand what the common asks are.
#PostFreely
Another archetype I’ve noticed is what I’ve called —
Technical SysOp
The way I would describe these people is —
This is someone whose responsibility is the operations of the software and the hardware.
They often want to install, configure, run, monitor and automate things. They also will need to update things from time-to-time.
They sometimes use 3rd party tools to help with this.
They sometimes write their own tools to help with this.
Some want web-based systems. Some want terminal-based systems.
Another archetype I’ve noticed is what I’ve called —
Rich-Textists
⚠️ NOTE that this is a different archetype from the “Rich-Text Typists” ⚠️
(Maybe it needs a more distinctive name‽)
The way I would describe these people is —
They are people who have used Mastodon — but wish they could add some “richness” to their posts —
- bolding,
- color,
- embedded images,
- embedded videos,
- headings,
- hyperlinks,
- italics,
- tables,
- etc.
(Unlike the Rich-Text Typist archetype) this archetype is OK with using the mouse or trackpad when writing.
And thus would be OK with tool-bars, pop-up tools, and even WYSIWYG editors, etc.
Another archetype I’ve noticed is what I’ve called —
Smallneter
The way I would describe them is —
These are people who want to make their content simultaneously available on the Fediverse and the “smallnet” alt-protocols such as finger, gemini, gopher, HTTP (restricted), mercury, nex, and others.
(Note that PostFreely already has gopher support built into it.)
Another archetype I’ve noticed is what I’ve called —
Markdownists
The way I would describe these people is —
They have already decided they want to type in markdown.
Whether that be micro-blogging, blogging, commenting, writing books, or whatever.
They are looking for tools to enable them do that.
I think more research is needed to understand —
- what flavors of markdown are popular with these people, and
- if there are any features missing from the flavor(s) of markdown they have been using.
@reiver It’s not so much that I want to type in Markdown, it’s more that every other option is worse. When I try to use wysiwyg office software I find it incredibly frustrating, largely because it’s designed for people who don’t want to use defined styles with clear semantics. And while I personally have used LaTeX for letters and other personal documents, it’s not something I feel I can recommend to ordinary people, and it’s not very readable in raw form.
@mitexleo @reiver@flamewar.social
When you write long-form articles or a blog posts —
How do you go about writing it?
…
Also — do you care about:
• bolding?,
• color?,
• embedded images?,
• embedded videos?,
• headings?,
• hyperlinks?,
• italics?,
• tables?,
• etc?
Another archetype I’ve noticed is what I’ve called —
Rich-Text Typists
The way I would describe these people is —
They want something that doesn’t take them out of the “flow” when writing.
HTML is too difficult for them. Plain-Text is not expressive enough for them.
And they don’t want to have to use a classical tool-bar (found in many word-processors) because using a mouse or track-pad takes them out of the “flow” when writing.
They want to keep typing distraction free.
For them plain-text isn’t an option because it is missing features they consider a must —
- bolding,
- color,
- embedded images,
- embedded videos,
- headings,
- hyperlinks,
- italics,
- tables,
- etc.
I think more research is needed to understand what are the common things someone like this would consider missing from plain-text (or any other potential format).
Some of these people find some variant of Markdown attractive. For example — RMarkdown is popular with people who write scholarly papers, books, or lessons.
Although they may also find other formats attractive. (The format is a means to an end. Not an end in and of itself.)
@reiver This is me, and I’ve been thinking about this for a while, what _is_ the minimum set I need? I’m not sure. Emphasis. Bullets. Hyperlinks. Headings if I’m writing long form. Images.
Tables rarely.
Embeds are weird special cases and kinda hard to slice no matter what.
Another archetype I’ve noticed is what I’ve called —
Long Post Wanters
(Maybe this needs a better name 🙂)
The way I would describe these people is —
These are people who are already experienced with Mastodon if not the broader Fediverse.
They like Mastodon but want a way to write longer posts.
They still want most the usual Fediverse related features of Mastodon — but want to be able to write longer posts.
I think more research as — there is other Fediverse software that lets you create longer posts. Why choose one over the other?
Another archetype I’ve noticed is what I’ve called —
Information Managers
The way I would describe them is —
People who use these tools to help them think better.
- They want to take notes.
- They want to write their thoughts.
- They want to comment on articles.
- They want to quote things (from texts, audios, and videos).
- They want to record conversations.
- They want to write evergreen summaries.
- They want to post photos.
- They want to post videos.
- They want to post links.
- They want to tag, categorize, re-tag, re-categorize things (including other tags and categories, and not just the quotes and articles).
- So this would mean hierarchical tags
- They want to link between posts.
- They want useful and helpful visualizations of all this.
- They want to search all this.
- They want to be able to filter things by tags and categories.
- They want to be able to filter things by the intersection of multiple tags and categories.
- They want version control.
- They want to rename things (and they don’t want links pointing to that to break).
Some of them will talk about “second brains” or the “zettelkasten method”. Although many (maybe most) will have their own method that they came up with.
